The 9th Cir.’s Felon-Voting Ruling: Justice Served or an ‘Embarrassment’?

Predicting whether the Supreme Court will agree to hear a given case is often, as many LBers know, a futile exercise.

But occasionally a ruling will emanate from a state supreme court or federal appellate panel which sort of has “Certiorari Granted” written all over it. (Many such cases happen to come out of the Ninth Circuit, a court that gets derided for being too liberal as often as it gets derided for covering too much geographical territory.)

In any event, such is our hunch concerning a ruling handed down yesterday, by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. The panel voted 2-1 to overturn a 2000 ruling of a district judge in Spokane that Washington state’s felon disenfranchisement law didn’t violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The ruling, written by Ninth Circuit judge Wallace Tashima, essentially mandates that incarcerated felons in Washington state must be allowed to vote. Click here for the opinion; here for the AP story; here for the Seattle Times story.

According to the AP story, there’s a patchwork of laws across the nation concerning restoration of felons’ voting rights, but only Maine and Vermont allow those behind bars to cast ballots. But Tuesday’s ruling might open the door to more incarcerated-felon enfranchisement.

The lawsuit, filed by a Washington man serving a three-year sentence at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla for a series of felony-theft convictions, contended that because nonwhites make up a large percentage of the prison population, a state law prohibiting inmates and parolees from voting is illegal because it dilutes the electoral clout of minorities.

Of the more than 18,000 felons currently in state custody who could get their right to vote back under this ruling, 37.1% are minorities. Of that group, blacks make up the largest percentage, at 19.2%.

The state contended that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the law wasn’t intended to discriminate against minorities.

Larry Weiser, a law professor at Gonzaga who is the lead attorney in the lawsuit, cheered the ruling. “In this case, we have proved that the criminal justice system in this state is biased against African-Americans, and the impact has been a violation of their voting rights,” he said.

Not everyone agreed. Tuesday’s court’s ruling is “an embarrassment,” said Trent England, a policy director at Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington state. “It flies in the face of precedent,” he said. “Not only is felon disenfranchisement constitutional but it’s good policy. People who commit the most heinous crimes should be deprived of their voice in our system of government at least for a time.”

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The Law Blog covers the legal arena’s hot cases, emerging trends and big personalities. It’s brought to you by lead writer Jacob Gershman with contributions from across The Wall Street Journal’s staff. Jacob comes here after more than half a decade covering the bare-knuckle politics of New York State. His inside-the-room reporting left him steeped in legal and regulatory issues that continue to grab headlines.

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